Thought control and the first amendment

This article explores the application of the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the purported right of an individual to think socially stigmatized thoughts—for example, psychotic or sexually sadistic thoughts. The state may attempt to control such thoughts either by imposing a thought-control technology on the thinker or by prohibiting the thinker from voluntarily using thought-control technology of his own. Thought-control technologies embrace antipsychotic drugs, hallucinogenic drugs, pornography, and other mind-altering devices. Two underlying models of the free speech clause are proposed—a strong model and a weak model. Despite the apparent endorsement of the strong model by the United States Supreme Court, courts in fact vacillate between the two models and are, apparently, reluctant to utilize the First Amendment as a tool to enforce any right to think wicked thoughts. This reluctance, it is proposed, may well have a religious basis in an equation of wicked thoughts with sin.